Brother Brother
by Windslayer
Summary: FFVI. Terra experiences a revelation during the final battle: As I plunge my sword into your heart I remember that I once called you brother.


A/N: This is a small story that sprang into my head one day while playing FFVI and listening to Carole King. Hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own FFVI, that glorious game belongs to Square.

* * *

Oh brother of mine you have always been so good to me and though you didn't always talk to me there wasn't much my lovin' eyes could not see and I don't believe you need all your misery Oh brother brother brother - Brother Brother - Carole King

* * *

I'm the only one left now. I'm scared for myself and terrified for the fate of the others. I don't know what you've done to them, or if they're even alive or dead. You got them all, all except for me. You tried to get me too. You tried, but I jumped out of the way at the last second.

I scramble to my feet, almost tripping over my purple dress. You are two feet away from me, within the reach of my sword. You are laughing, laughing that horrible, screeching, piercing laugh. I know what is behind that laugh. You do not think I can kill you by myself. You think I will fail now, and you will rule the world for eternity without opposition, killing whomever you feel like and leaving people without homes and children without parents, your damn light of judgment raining down from the skies forever. My hatred of you courses through my veins.

But I see that you have given me an opening. You are within sword's reach of me, but you are not looking at me. You are staring upward and laughing. You are wondering how the girl with the slave crown could ever even hope to defeat you. You have underestimated me far, far too much. This is my opening.

I lunge toward you. My sword is not parried, and I feel the resistance build as it strikes home. I throw my entire weight upon it as it sinks deeper and deeper into your chest. There is blood flowing everywhere, all over you, all over my sword, and all over me. You are too shocked to do anything.

But what is this? You are looking straight at me now, and the insane glint in your eye has somewhat dimmed. I pull my sword out, and you fall to your knees, still staring at me with this different look in your eyes. I am about to stab you again. But I hesitate this time and I do not know why.

You collapse sideways onto the ground. This is my chance, and I do not hesitate again. And then I realize, with a horrible, sinking sensation in my heart, a realization buried deep within my shattered memories. As I plunge my sword into your heart, I remember that I once called you brother.

* * *

A boy plays in the courtyard of the imperial palace. He is about ten years old, with light brown hair. He wears a simple green shirt and black pants, and is bouncing a ball off of one of the stone walls.

"Kefka!" someone shouts. The boy looks up. It is the emperor. He is being followed by a small girl with green hair and a confused look on her face.

"Kefka, I have brought you a friend to play with. Look after her now!" The emperor leaves the girl there, and heads back toward the palace doors to take care of other, much more important matters. The boy stares at the girl with his chocolate brown eyes for a few moments, then returns to bouncing the ball against the wall, hoping if he ignores her she will go away.

The girl simply sits down and waits. The boy catches glimpses of her every couple of minutes. She is gazing at him, as if she doesn't care whether he ignores her or not. Like she is used to being ignored.

He takes a few steps over to her and hands her the ball. Now that he is looking at her, she averts her gaze and stares at the smooth gray stone floor. Her hand moves as if to motion for the ball, but she quickly lets it fall at her side.

"Hey," he says. She looks up at him with large, almost impossibly green eyes. "What's your name?"

The girl says nothing for a moment. Then, suddenly, softly whispers.

"Terra."

* * *

It is a year or so later. Some children are running around the palace grounds. Slowly they group around the girl, mocking her green hair and eyes, and comparing it to their much more superior hair and eye colors. She does not tell them to stop, and when a tear trickles out of one of her green eyes it only fuels the cruel children's laughter.

"Stop it!" a voice suddenly commands. All heads except the girl's turn toward the speaker. It is the boy, now in a uniform of the imperial army.

"It's Kefka!" one of them mumbles. They know that if they are caught tormenting the girl, he will have his revenge on them.

"Run!" shouts someone, and the children scatter, leaving the girl alone, save for the boy. He walks over to the girl and puts a hand on her shoulder.

"Are you alright?" he asks her calmly. She nods, another tear running down her cheek. Suddenly she hugs him around the middle, and buries her face into his shirt to hide her sobs. He returns her hug, but his face stares after the fleeing children, his eyes blazing with anger.

"Don't worry Terra," he says to her. "They won't ever hurt you again. I promise." She stops sobbing almost immediately.

"Th-thank you... big brother."

* * *

"Congratulations Terra, today you are a member of the glorious Imperial Forces!" The emperor smiles at her, and she takes her place to the left of him, next to her 'big brother.' But he, now a young man, leans in to talk to the emperor.

"She is too young," he says. "She might get hurt."

"Nonsense Kefka, you joined when you were younger than she."

"But I really must protest-"

"Kefka!" interrupts the emperor sharply. "Certainly you are not letting your personal feelings get in the way of the good of the empire?" There is no reply. Defeated, his takes his retakes his place at the emperor's left hand.

The girl nudges him.

"Don't worry about me. I'll be alright."

* * *

She looks on through the smooth glass into the immaculate white operating room, eyes widened in horror. Her brother is shackled down to a table. Dozens and dozens of tubes are connected to what seems like every inch of his skin. Doctors and nurses rush around the room with worried eyes. Something has gone wrong. Very wrong.

The sedatives wear off and suddenly her brother wakes up. He does not see her horrified face behind the glass, but she can see his. He picks his head up and she sees a face almost as white as the walls that surround him. His wide eyes are no longer the loveable chocolate brown she remembers. They are a deep black. A terrified black.

The feelings in his eyes suddenly reach his heart. He opens his mouth wide.

He screams.

And screams.

And screams.

She can handle it no longer! She wants to run in and clasp her brother's hand, hold him and tell him that everything is okay, somehow make him stop, make his terrified heart stop screaming.

Her fists hammer against the glass and she begins to wail as more tears stream down her cheeks.

But he does not hear her.

A nurse suddenly plunges a syringe into his leg and his eyes glaze over. The face goes paler and his head drops back onto the pillow. Doctors begin to mutter about tubes and readjust some that have been knocked out of place.

Why do they care? she wonders. He is in so much pain! What did they do to him?!

Her wails subside but the tears do not. There is a noise behind her – the door has opened. A girl not much older than herself enters the observation room, her sharp high heels ringing out against the tiled floor. She has seen the young woman several times before, but has never spoken with her. She does not even know the blonde haired woman's name.

She doesn't seem to see the green-haired girl at first. Instead she looks at the young man strapped to the table in the next room, her ice blue eyes revealing no emotion behind them.

Suddenly she lays a hand on the younger girl's shoulder.

"Come away," she says as she begins to wipe away the tears. "You can do nothing for him now."

"W-why don't you care?" the girl chokes out. "Can't you do something?!"

The blonde begins to pull her away from the scene. "I can do nothing now but learn."

"Learn?"

"Yes." She motions toward the victim who is sustained only by the tubes. "In three months, that will be me."

The boy wakes up again. The girl looks over her shoulder once more to see that his eyes now have an evil red tint to them. He is no longer screaming.

He is laughing.

* * *

She does not leave her brother's side. He will not wake up. He has not woken up in three weeks.

She sleeps in her chair and takes her meals in his room. The rest of her day is spent talking to him and whispering to him.

"Wake up," she whispers most frequently. "Big brother, please wake up."

The emperor has been to visit only a few times. He talks with the man in the yellow coat and shakes his head in disappointment. She used to believe that he was worried about how her brother was faring.

But that beautiful bit of her innocence has been shattered. She now knows that the emperor is only concerned about the fate of his best solider, about the process that his best soldier had undertaken. If he does not wake up, the process will be declared a failure. The blonde woman will never suffer what he has been through.

Still, she hopes against hope that her brother will wake one day.

* * *

He opens his eyes. There is a white mist around them that takes some time to dissipate.

When it clears he sees his sister leaning on his bed with her head in her arms. She is asleep. He reaches out to touch her face and is startled by how hot it burns. She is like fire.

She has power, he realizes. She has power without having to suffer what I have been through.

The girl wakes with a start. Upon seeing his eyes open her face bursts into a smile.

"Big brother!" she cries as she pulls him into a tight hug.

"I waited so long for you to wake up!" He smiles back at his sister, but his smile does not go to his eyes. It is not fair.

* * *

He has been gone for several years, securing the empire's territory in distant lands. His powers have flourished. He believes himself to be the most powerful being on the face of the planet.

He has new thoughts about the planet as well. He questions its existence and the existence of the people upon it.

Ah the people. What are they? They are ants. They are so small, so insignificant compared to his power. Why should they exist? They should exist to serve him, to please him.

Still, upon his homecoming, he longs to see his little sister. Some rebellious part of his superior mind still holds some feelings of love.

Upon seeing her grin he is forced to smile in spite of himself. She has grown into a beautiful young woman with a bubbling and laughing personality. So far away from the shy, withdrawn girl she has once been.

But later he is called upon by the emperor to witness one of her training sessions. She is not like the rest.

Her power far surpasses his. She can use her fire so naturally, so beautifully without effort. She had not been through the process that he had, nor has she agonized over the vigorous and grueling training he had had to endure in order to control the power. She had never known what it was to put all of her effort, focus, and control into calling up a single small flame into her palm. The part of his mind that still loves her is suddenly shattered in a jealous rage. How dare she be able to surpass him?!

She cannot be allowed to continue. She is not like him. She does not understand what she is capable of. She needs guidance, his guidance. Only then can her power be used to the fullest extent imaginable. He is required to use her power. It is only for her own well-being and the well being of the planet.

He asks the emperor for control of her. The emperor, believing that he only has the best interests of the empire at heart, immediately hands over custody of the young woman to his trusted general.

He smiles.

She will be his pet.

* * *

She sits on a chair in a small room. She is nervous and scared. Why is her brother acting so strangely? Why has he imprisoned her in this tiny cell?

Suddenly he sweeps into the room. His evil red eyes instantly focus their gaze upon her. She stares back into those eyes and realizes that she doesn't know this person. This is not the brother that she had loved.

He is gone.

Tears come into her eyes again as she realizes that her brother died in that operating room. His screams were the last things he ever uttered. The laugh… the laugh came from this thing, this creature that had stolen her brother's form.

"Don't worry little sister," he had said to her before he entered that death chamber. "I'll come out as good as new."

He lied to me, she thinks. He lied to me and let the empire twist him and kill him!

But she does not have much more time to think these thoughts.

"My sweet little magic user…" he begins. Then that laugh comes again. Oh how she hates that laugh.

"With this slave crown you'll be all mine!" It is only then that she sees the black tiara he holds in his left hand.

She knows what it will do to her. She has seen it before. The crown will rip all thoughts and all will from her. She will not be able to remember anything upon its removal. She will never be the same person that she is now.

And with a stab, she understands she doesn't want to be this person. This person hides her sorrow behind a mask of joy and laughter. This girl is already a slave to an empire whose ideas she doesn't believe in, a slave to an empire that tortures and murdered without thought. And she did nothing to stop it.

The only person this girl loved was murdered by the empire.

Love. Ha.

Maybe the new person would find love, love that didn't wane or die.

As the crown is lowered onto her head she calls up two thoughts into her mind. The first is the image of a boy in a green shirt with chocolate brown eyes smiling at her. The second is not an image, or a word. It is simply a feeling.

Love.

* * *

Your eyes are that same chocolate brown now. No insanity remains there. My sword falls to the ground with a clatter as the innumerable memories and the utter horror of what I have done fill every corner of my consciousness.

Oh gods… I have killed you! I have murdered my own brother! I am no better than the empire I despised!

But you do not seem worried. You are smiling. You have somehow killed the creature that stole your body.

You are my brother again.

The tears begin again. I want to tell you how sorry I am, I want to tell you that I love you, that I'm glad he is gone and you can be the big brother I knew once again. But no words come. I can do nothing but smile a small sad smile at you.

But you realize that I am utterly speechless. You take my hand, still so small in yours, and you smile up at me with a smile of love.

"T-thank you… Little sister."

The hand holding mine goes limp. You fall forward and lie still.

The tears are flowing freely now as I sink beside you. I turn you over and hold your lifeless body in my arms and close your chocolate eyes. I am sobbing.

Suddenly there is a hand placed on my shoulder. It is the blonde woman again. Celes.

"Come away," she says to me as she wipes the tears from my eyes. "You can do nothing for him now."

"But I killed-" the terror of the word takes my breath away once again.

"You did not kill," she says in a soft voice. "You saved. You saved us all and you saved him as well."

I turn away from the body of my brother and look at the faces surrounding me. Their eyes are full of sympathy and another, much more important emotion. Their eyes are full of love. I stand up to face them. Edgar, Locke, Relm, Gau, Mog, Strago, Cyan, Sabin, Shadow, even Gogo and Umaro. I draw strength from them.

A rough hand grabs my own. Long silver hair and deep green eyes. Setzer.

"We have to get going now," he whispers. "The tower is collapsing." I lean in to him. My strength is returning. I can lead them out. I can save them from death in this dying place.

My brother's love settles into its place in my heart alongside theirs. I know what it is to love completely and fully.

We will all live again.

Thank you brother.

* * *

The End.


End file.
